In the Swan public house, at Radcot on the banks of the Thames, storytelling is a much-prized gift during the long winter. When one night, a stranger bursts in, with a small drowned girl in his arms, a tragic tale begins. But when the girl subsequently wakes and returns to the living, this is a story like no other: a miracle. What’s more the girl is mute and cannot explain her origins, which leaves an empty space to fill with other people’s truths.
The mystery child is claimed by a local couple to be their daughter who was kidnapped several years ago, but she could also be the child of a fallen woman who drowned herself two days before; whose grandfather is desperately seeking her. A tug of war begins, fuelled by the endlessly evolving stories from the Swan.
This is a charming story, the writing is rich, at times almost poetic, the personalities in the Swan reminded me of a Robert Hardy tale. The characteristics, beauty and treachery of the Thames when it was primarily a working river, are carefully explored. The stranger turns out to be a photographer recording the Thames environments, and we get an intriguing look into early photography. The local midwife, Rita, is a strong portrait of a woman working under difficult circumstances and wary of relinquishing any of her hard-fought independence. As the person who pronounced the child dead at first, her reputation is at stake, but she still seeks a rational explanation, while the stories told at the Swan get ever more fanciful. Is the child somebody’s lost daughter or a fairy sprite? After all she did appear on the longest night, the winter solstice…
